


Portfolio

by thumbipeach



Category: Purple Hyacinth - Ephemerys & Sophism (Webcomic)
Genre: Angst, Character Study, F/M, Hurt, Hurt No Comfort, I want Kieran White to cry his eyes out send post, Kieran “stupid bitch” White, SIMP!Kieran, burn - Freeform, but only if you squint like really hard, honestly you need a prescription to see anybody but Kieran in this, i wrote this in one day because I have the self control of a lobster in a supermarket fishtank, introspective, lots of it oh my god, not slow just fast, please accept this offering, porfolio motif, slams hands on table
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-19
Updated: 2020-08-19
Packaged: 2021-03-06 07:35:48
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,419
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25999852
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thumbipeach/pseuds/thumbipeach
Summary: That simple joy of knowing you have the power to create and destroy at will, can build whatever you wish from the foundation of nothing and rip apart things that were yours to command, the kind of abandon a killer owns, that an artist knows as his right.That is creativity.
Relationships: Kieran White/Lauren Sinclair (minor)
Comments: 21
Kudos: 55





	Portfolio

_) Le Nid de Merle_

  
  


A robin has built a nest in the tree.

It’s not such an egregious thing; it’s tucked quietly into the seam of a branch that does not need to be touched by him, higher than his small stature can even dream of reaching for. He could not untangle the basket of twigs and straw even if he had the most intense desire for it.

When he inquires closer, more details spring forth. He is balanced on a ladder of curving bark, his feet planted firmly and his hands wearing a vice grip into the overhead branches, as he leans his head in, maps the planes of the robin's sacred domain, its temporary home and sanctuary.

Three round eggs, the kind of blue that makes the sky weep, and set in perfect formation, like all the picture books claim they ought to be placed. That is what he sees, that is Kieran White's introduction to the euphoria of color.

His hands itch, his fingers buzz and hum. He knows it couldn't be poison ivy or mosquitos; it’s something much worse.

Leaping from the tree with ferocious want, he clambers back up the porch steps, rummages through a drawer for a sharp piece of charcoal, for the soothing white in a blank page of parchment.

_"Don't make a mess of things, mon ange,"_ he hears his mother call from somewhere. But he neglects that in his haste for the press of grey on ivory.

"I won't, _Maman!"_ He fabricates, as he leaves a due mess in his wake. 

He treads across the needlepoint of grass, sidesteps pebbles that ache to pain him, and grasps the bark once more, hoisting and heaving until his body, lithe and bone-thin, can nestle itself in the divot of two branches. 

There, he is again presented with the dichotomy of blue on brown, of mud and sky, of color, color, vibrant and saturated and all real and alive. Once again it brings a smile to his lips, leaves his palms clutching the blank paper in need, in desire to mark it.

But there is still the slight fear that comes with a slate not yet desecrated. That fear that once you plunge, it will ruin the calm stillness of a blank sheet of paper forever. That fear that you will never have that freedom back again, the freedom to hunt and to scratch and bleed grain on cream.

But Kieran White begins to learn that fear will bring him nowhere. Because as he sits and contemplates, the robin returns. 

It's not often that they leave their brood unattended; but Kieran White has an uncanny way of finding the out, finding the loophole. He found the nest in the one time it was sans a gatekeeper.

The mother robin clutches the nest of twigs in deceptively harmless talons, shakes her downy head and sets a beady eye forward as her world narrows to her eggs, and Kieran takes that as his cue, recognizes that if he sits paralyzed a moment longer, he will lose the opportunity forever.

And so it begins.

Frantically he drags the pencil across the page, looking up frequently at his subject, his study. He knows from practice with vases and bowls of fruit, that in order to truly capture something in time like one would a photograph, he has to disregard the finer details, trust in simpler shapes and nature’s instinctual, geometric design.

So, the forms, they sculpt themselves as if he were working with clay. The way the Robin's delicate neck curves, the way the beak slots itself into the groove of the triad of eggs, the way the nest shifts, the way it gnarls with whorls of careful construction. 

The way the robin, inhuman as it may be, still tends to it’s eggs with one painfully human emotion; love.

When the robin finally turns and notices the other party, the stowaway in its territory, it takes all Kieran has to leap from the tree before the rightful fury of a mother bird threatens his sanctity. But he manages; he’s always been quick, so his mother has observed.

When he settles himself on the floorboards of his porch, panting, he holds up the paper to the sunlight, letting it stream through and illuminate the pencil marks in raw grey, in dappled ridges of pressed leaves and the beige wash of tone, of hue.

Then he takes up the pencil, roughing in the corners where line meets line, where the robin’s plumage needs to remain its stalwart nebula of the darkest umber. He finishes the work through memory, the most unique camera of all.

Then, in the corner, like a religious rite, he signs his name.

It’s his, only for him.

A reminder of what he’s done.

His mother comes out of the back door, making to wave the discarded remnants of the drawer in his face, begin a railing lecture, but stops when she sees the scrawling notes of what her son has created.

She bends, and when she takes the parchment from his hands, surveys the work under sunlight, he feels a new thing to be codified, baptized:

Pride.

“This is—“ she gushes—“ _lovely, mon ange.”_

_“Is it, Maman?”_ He asks, his hold still eagerly chained to the pencil.

She bent her knees, white skirt pooling on a porch dusted with figments of brown and yellow foliage, of vague scraps of dirt, and when she is to his level, when eyes of a blue not dissimilar to a robin’s egg look into ones imparted from hers, she registers it too.

Pride. Pride, pride, _pride._

Kieran knows, now, why his hands ached. Because they do now, too—to sketch the effervescent planes of his mother’s face when she tells him:

“You are talented, my son. You are—“

She ruffles his dark hair, her hands gentle and loving.

”—A good artist.”

_Date: April 9, XX12_

_Desc: Robin’s nest, mother with three eggs. Graphite, charcoal, loose leaf._

_The first. Not the last, because once I start, I cannot stop._

  
  
  


_) La Salle à Manger_

  
  


The small car smells. Horribly.

There are little ways one could manage to describe the way scents feel, the way they inspire emotion. One could try with words and pencil, but it would always render flat, a meaningless fraction. It could never translate well, like an incoherent cypher of senses and ephemeral bursts of color.

And he has tried, before. He’s attempted to sketch the way the soft scent of funnel cakes and powdered sugar had made him feel, the comfort of bed linens washed with lavender and ocean salt, the way raw honeycomb smelled as it broke apart in perfect hexagonal fractions, the way his mother’s perfume would card through the air, all soft vanilla and calla lilies, the soft soap of her gentle fingers—

The car jostles, and he buries his face in his knees, clutching his trouser legs tightly and trying to soothe the aches, both in his spine and limbs and heart, but in his palms too; they want for a blank slate, a clean chalkboard to try and make sense of his grievances, his pain.

When they arrive at a destination, that of sepia smoke and burnt inhibitions, he trails on the heels of many others like him, tries to ignore the soot clinging to his lashes, the faint trails of blood on his ankles.

There are boys, girls; but there are also men, women; though not much of the latter. The men gather in small circles, their coats brushing sandy cobble and then cool hardwood, concrete and marble, as they walk in lines, conversing amongst themselves.

_“What should we do with—?“_

_“You know what our orders are—just keep them to their rooms—“_

_“They’re all in some sort of shock.”_

_“Everyone would be. It doesn’t make them any different.”_

Kieran lifts his head from where he’s been keeping it downcast, looks tentatively at the men in front of him, only to find them glancing over their shoulders, their eyes seeming to narrow in on him like birds of prey, and now he is the one in the nest, wishing for someone to comfort him, to display emotion, ever human. 

They consider him for longer than the others, their eyes roving over his lanky build, coming to rest on his hands, the digits lithe and dexterous, and stained irreversibly with red paint.

Their scrutiny, like he is a gossamer butterfly under a scientist’s harsh microscope, does not go unnoticed by the children around him. They shoot him glances, they back away like he has been burnt, branded by an unwilling iron. And he has been—he is marked by their seeming approval.

Later, he sits slumped against a wall, horribly and unutterably alone, his mouth tasting of ash and knees dusted with soot. He feels like crying; but his eyes and mind are barren dry, emotions such as his congealing in a fiery desert, the only way he can keep himself afloat.

He doesn’t know for how long he rests there, only that the light shifts as the days, months, seeming centuries rotate on that axis of unthwarted time. It turns soft cream, then yellow, then nears a bloody orange, bleeding into violet and cold, frosty blue. 

A bell tolls, somewhere, and he is led with another cohort into a small dining hall. It’s unforgiving, long tables and moldy wood grain dappled with dirty plates, and seated rows of people; so very many people.

He takes his place amongst a sea of others, and when a meager offering of bread and stale cheese is set forth, he can only manage to pick at it. His mouth still feels filled with soot and iron shards from the explosion, from the way debris had pricked the once soft skin and the once happy heart. 

Then, he takes a tentative bite.

It’s _good._ It’s _good._

It’s not his mother’s sweet bread or the lemon pastries that the bakery by his house had sold every Tuesday, and it could never hold a candle to sitting by the firelight and holding buttery dough in his fingers, savoring the summer, but it’s _something,_ it’s _something,_ and it’s _good._

He finds himself reaching for a paper napkin, crushing the tip of the brittle, coffee colored paper in two fingers, desperate.

A man walks by, his coat ruffling. His face is half hidden by the shadow of the dimly lit dining hall, but when he turns and Kieran can see his face, it’s made jagged like raw puzzle pieces, like sugarcane stalks hacked to milky white pieces. He looks horrible, pale, old even though no seams mark his skin quite yet.

Once again the intense analysis of a hawk is upon him, and the man looks down at his wayward fingers from under a shockingly aquiline nose, his mouth pressed like the spine of a book.

“Are you—“ he turns to Kieran, his face deceptively curious—“in need of something?”

Kieran swallows, rasps. _“Yes. Yes—can you—“_

“I can’t get you more bread, if that’s what you’re going to ask—“

_“No—“_ Kieran says, and he is thoroughly embarrassed at the near hysteria bleeding into his voice. His hands flex, he can feel his fingernails caked with charred rubble pressing scores into his palms. 

“ _I need—“_

The man’s eyebrows disappear under shadow, that’s how high they’ve gone in his disapproval. 

“A _pencil.”_ He finally stammers, looking up with wide eyes, as though he’s not sure of what he’s asking himself. 

“A _pencil…?”_

Kieran stops, considering the request. It’s silly, it’s foolish—perhaps they will even kill him for it.

Silence. The judgement of a sinner, a creator, but a reluctant arbiter—perhaps that is the painting, here.

Then, the man cocks his head, a vulture considering the value of his prey, and walks off with intent, disappearing behind large ornate doors. 

In moments not passed he has reappeared, and he holds out a stick of graphite. It’s not much; nearly worn and the remnants staining the man’s broad fingers, like thick logs. But Kieran takes it eagerly, anyway, making to thank him.

But the man leaves with only one last look of something that could be called anticipation, apprehension.

But probably, it was more than mere approval.

Glancing down at the scraps of bread he still has left, the orange block of cheese, he takes up the pencil with clean fingers and smooths the napkin out onto the ridges table.

It’s hard, drawing on an uneven surface, on a piece of paper not made for marking with anything other than grease and crumbs. But Kieran learns a new thing, then; that any artist, with enough conviction, can build from nothing.

Slowly, surely, the wooden grain takes shape. The corners of the hall are shaded in hatching, in even strokes with the flat of the pencil, and then the subject comes, the way the bread is bitten and the cheese swirling in dull yellow.

Somehow, even though there is no color to be had, yellow light seeps into the page, colors the cast shadows in warmth and buttery pleasure.

He doesn’t hold it up, because the kids next to him are watching him in roving awe, their gooseberry eyes unnerving, and he hunches to hide the evidence of his predisposition.

He signs his name in the corner, two initials which once would have meant something to him.

It’s a reminder—of what he has done.

Later, when he marches out the hall, napkin crushed in a bitter palm, he hears myriad whispers that he tries to ignore, tries desperately to block the implications of.

_“That one—why him?”_

_“Well—look at his fingers.”_

_“He is an artist—that hardly means he will be obedient—quite the opposite.”_

_“No. Perhaps not.”_

_“Then—?”_

_“But I am curious. To see if he can find artistic pleasure in what we will make him do.”_

_“If we cannot mold him so easily.”_

_“If he will cave.”_

Somewhere, someday, a door closes on sunlight, leaving only ants and mice to feed on the remnants of apples and bread.

_Date: November 14th, XX17_

_Desc: dining hall of the Apostle’s compound. Graphite, paper napkin._

_It came with practice, again. When I do it once, it’s hard to let go._

_What has happened?_

  
  


_  
) Le Petit Blanchet_

The boy about his age; he won’t leave him.

He first came in after the chandelier had made its claim, had spun wreaths of blood into a hung and dried body like spires of a church, like carefully pulled taffy. Kieran feels as though he is alone in his misery, alone in his grief, and he supposes that even with this new presence, he still is, just less so.

He’d seen him out of his peripheral from where he lay in a cot, recovering from a defiant gash to his abdomen that the fallen had given him in a final act of retribution. As he lies on his side and tries not to hoarsely cry his grievances, make the others feel his pain, he tilts his head and notices a flash of white, of a boy not that much younger than him clutching strips of gauze as he pleads with one of the beaked men. 

He looks out of place in the cold blues and dark purples of the hospital ward. He acts as a beacon, a blinding globe of light like a roving lighthouse in the depths of a snowstorm, and his voice doesn’t carry enough for Kieran to hear with his ear pressed against goosefeather, but he knows by how the boy bends how passionate it must sound, how opaque with blind trust.

The harpy places its talons on his shoulders, the fabric of his shirt pulls with the disapproval, and the boy walks away with only slightly more than his tail between his legs. 

Kieran forgets it happens, until he keeps coming again. 

He first feels it in little bursts. When he is sitting on one of the many benches in the compound, the same stick of graphite still held belligerently in his fingers, sketching the soft lines of the trees beyond, the way smoke spirals up from chimneys in which lie little glass families, their dollhouse beds and their fishing lines decked with the washing. When that is his solace, he finds it disturbed by the boy in white, the boy of newspaper clippings.

He feels someone sit next to him, and when he turns he finds himself staring into a beaming face.

His hair is as soft and light as snow, colored just so, and his eyes, too, they are the dull slate of blades and steel, but do not live up that namesake with how gentle and reverent they appear. He is a film of black and white, rendered in chrome and noir and blanc, and save for the unwavering sky of his uniform, the soft bluebell petals in his hair, Kieran would be sure he was looking at a photograph.

“That’s really good!” The boy says, pointing. Kieran looks down at his work, as though he was just now considering its existence. Then, he purses his lips.

“I--thank you. But I don’t know about that.” He says, and his voice is near breathless.

The boy gasps in what could be called abject horror, if Kieran did not already know that to be here, to be beside him, the boy must have been through a worse hell already. 

“How could you say that?! It’s--” he gestured to the movement of the clothes people had hung on their lines, the way the trees in the drawing seemed to sway as though they were moved by a real wind.

“--the perspective is off.” Kieran says petulantly, critically, tilting the pad of paper until the angle is changed, and he can see all-too-palpably the way the lines of the building converge in a point different from the rest.

“Hm--” the boy hums, holding out his hands, palms upward in want.

“May I?”

Kieran looks astonished, and the boy takes that as some sort of cue, gently pulling the pad from his fingers until he can study it face on. His nose scrunches, and he tilts the paper in much the same way Kieran had, his lips pulled in a comical pout. 

Kieran feels like laughing at his intense scrutiny of his work, but stifles it, afraid to break the comfort of anonymity, of enigmatic pause.

The boy nods decisively, his announcement ready.

“I don’t see it!” He says unhelpfully, handing the pad back to Kieran with an irritating smile. Kieran resists the urge to groan.

“To _you,_ perhaps.” Kieran sighs. “But I suppose I have a more--biased outlook on the matter.”

The boy huffs, nodding. “I think you do!” 

He looks out to the land beyond, his face brimming with delight. “It looks exactly like the real thing!”

But Kieran doesn’t focus on his words, doesn’t focus on the way sunlight soothes over his cheekbones as he turns to regard the boy in full, and he finds himself unable to control himself as he tears off the current piece of paper, for a new one, a blank slate.

He does not hesitate. He has learned that hesitation is a folly, affords him nothing but missteps and missed chances, and sometimes death, if he were particularly foolish. He remembers vividly hesitating on roof shingles while blood frosted his sleeves; hesitating before a man condemned, watching the brief, momentary relief on his face snap like a bowstring as he brought his sword down to his shoulder; hesitating before a robin’s nest, and having to hastily cover up his intrusion.

Here is different, because before the boy has even turned he has already outlined the sharp angles of his face, coming in through the remnants of childhood and youth, borne of rounded apple cheeks and soft pudge; the way the boy’s hair flutters in the wind; the way his eyes light up in a flash of grey print, of typography made with words too fleeting to be of any momentous effect.

When the boy looks down again, the look on his face reminds Kieran of _why_ he does what he does. _Why_ he looks for the loopholes, the moments in time that the clock affords him, where people are caught off guard by their own humanity. His delighted gasp, it is everything.

“You drew _me!”_ The boy exclaims, and Kieran smiles softly. 

“Do you—?” 

But he doesn’t get to finish, because the boy presses his palm to the parchment, looks up at him in the utmost gratitude, his snow-light hair whipping around his face in a halo.

_“Thank you.”_ He smiles. 

Kieran can only nod.

“Is this why you’re always drawing?”

Kieran starts.

“You--you’ve seen--”

The boy nods vigorously. “Yes! You’re always buried in that thing--” he points--”even when I see you down--”

And to Kieran’s horror, his eyes soften into the one thing he hates the _most,_ the one thing he must grit his teeth to keep from biting out of his life: Pity. 

“--even when you are bleeding.” The boy closes his eyes, and straw-white lashes kiss his cheeks in reverence. Kieran feels, suddenly, that he does not belong with this boy, that this boy is somewhere illustrated on a different plane, in a different time--that his depiction, however lifelike, would always fall flat. 

“Why do you draw so much?” He asks, and the question does not get lost in the wind, now matter how hard it may blow, leaves and flower petals streaming down in a fusillade of kaleidoscopic fractals.

Kieran opens his mouth, to give the generic answer, the answer that comes first.

_Because it makes me happy,_ he almost says. _Because it is the one thing keeping me afloat, the one thing I know to always be constant, true, the one thing I can create and not destroy—_

And then stops.

Is he such a narcissist, really, that _that_ should be the only reason he creates? Is he so self-centered, that he only has a base understanding of the things he does, the reasons as to why he builds and builds and layers paper on paper and charcoal on charcoal? Is he that person?

He closes his mouth to keep the words in. But they flood, anyway, the useless things forming in composition to try and explain the fleeting feelings he has when he sees a blank canvas, a surface devoid of shapes and color.

“I--” he looks up, he looks up to try and find what he seeks in the sun and the way the clouds shift into fairy-floss phases and pools of buttercream.

“You know--” he turns to the boy, and the boy is listening to him, attentively, with pious reverence, like he is the only thing in the world worth listening to--”those moments in between time. Where you feel more human than anything?”

The boy considers the prospect, nodding slightly in agreement. Kieran finds that his joy has dimmed slightly, and for some reason he registers to him as someone much, much older--the bags under his eyes, the tired way he smiles.

“Yes--I think I understand.”

Kieran nods, turning away and looking back out to where cloth blows off its hinges.

“That’s what I want to capture.” 

His eyes close, and he is back on the day with the robin’s nest, and his mother’s gentle fingers, smelling of cut ginger and lemons.

_You are a good artist._

“Those fleeting spaces where—you’re reminded—”

The boy tilts his head, more leaves falling like a snowstorm from his hair.

“That life is real—whole.” He looks down at his hands.

“That humanity is beautiful.”

The boy hums in appreciation, his stance open and unbothered. He leans in with a doctor’s scrutiny, his eyes roving over scrapes and scars.

Then, without another word, he stands, brushing off his coat of petals and dust. Kieran belatedly notices he’s wearing a black coat much like the Apostles do--falling down his body and rendering him shapeless, like a cloak of midnight black amongst warmer hues.

“Wait!” He says, picking up his pencil again. The boy stops, turns with an eyebrow raised, his grey eyes wide.

“What is your name?” Kieran asks, graphite poised. “I can--write it here, for you.”

The boy is silent for a few moments. Then, he turns fully, fabric sweeping around his ankles like a wide broom, billowing like the flight of a dusky raven.

He smiles, teeth bared and milky white, blindingly so, neat rows almost intimidating.

“I don’t think I want to tell you--if that’s the reason for it.” He points to the drawing.

“Words--they have no place in pictures.” He says, and his smile only grows.

And with that he is gone, leaving Kieran alone again. 

He looks down at the page, where the only evidence of the boy’s existence is painted in plain grey, monochrome and unsaturation. He frowns.

He does not write his own name. 

Because the boy was right--words mean nothing, truly. 

He never sees him again, and the portrait is mostly forgotten, surrendered to merciless time, as Kieran White forges his path, picks up a blade and purple stems instead of a stick of graphite again.

He moves to a different medium.

_Date: May 26th, XX20_

_Desc: Portrait of white haired boy. Graphite, marker paper._

_If I were to see him now, would he still look as human?_

  
  


_  
) La Rue de Hanbury_

He stumbles into his room, haggard breathing and hyperventilation clogging his lungs, his senses, like wads of tissue, like spools of cotton. He breathes, he does, he _tries._ But nothing is as good of a salve to that as comfort, as security, one he cannot hope to have, now.

Red, red, red, it cries, it weeps, it screams. Red, violent and raw and scrubbed like foamy soap into his knuckles, his palms, his ribs and chest and neck--

He cards ferocious hands through inky black hair, stumbles into the room with the press and click of a key, making for the chair, desperate, his hands shaking and fumbling for anything, anything.

He doesn’t reach for grey, no. Not tonight. Now is not a night of calm waters and cool blues. Now is a night of red, maroon, bruises and scarlet and wine spilled on carpet as he beat death into a whole street of people.

He grits his teeth, the paper horribly blank before the paint gets to it. 

It’s not slow tonight. Usually it is; the way the street would form, the way the vanishing points define themselves in a commissure of line and shape and space, the way the details would etch themselves in patient practice.

Tonight it comes in a fast rush, red seeping into the page too thin for the medium he uses, like fire, like rust and iron. The street, the lamps, the glowing embers, and, of course, the thing that defines the scene better than words ever could: the wash, the bodies, the carnage of brutal lambs, of wool and cotton, of blood, of red.

Monochrome was pleasing. It was often reprimanded to his imagination as something unrealistic, a fraction of what life could really be painted in; but now he apologizes to that assessment, gives it a hyacinth and prostrates himself. Because now he understands that in life’s fleeting moments, where time is brief and humanity ever-fragile, the world can converge into one point, the vision of color can separate to one point, can be one point, one color—and tonight it is red, red.

Because when he had walked down that street, he saw only red.

And when he had taken, taken, destroyed like the impartial creator he is, the one he knows himself to be, he saw only red.

And after the fact, when he sits at his desk, in his room amongst his photographs of time and space, he can only manage red.

He bends, his spine pious in his supplication towards a greater good that would not hear him, and he buries his face in his hands, his voice rasping like a quiet wolf, water streaming into cupped palms. He does not know what to name it: it could be a sob, a howl, a moan. But it is something to be pitied.

He does not look at the painting again, for if he did he would see only red.

But he does do one thing--he signs his name, black amongst scores of red.

It is his, only his, for him alone.

_Date: December 12th, XX24_

_Desc: Hanbury Street, the night of the Purple Hyacinth’s return. Watercolor paper, red ink, red acrylic. Blood._

_A reminder._

  
  


_  
) La Renarde_

_“Stay,”_ she says, clad in nothing but silk sheets and the burning smoke of a half-finished cigarette.

He leaps upward with nary a noise, rooting for his shirt on the floor, and as he does so, he discreetly slips his fingers under the woman’s bedside table, feeling for the press of a file, feeling for something--

He feels bony arms twine around his shoulders, and he turns to abate the fox now begging, pleading, her blonde hair falling in a curtain of tresses around her bare shoulders.

“I can’t, you know that, _mon bien-aimée.”_ He says, sugar soft and honey-sweet, like the tart inside of a fig. His fingers grasp lower, towards the drawer handles, feeling the ornate brass under calloused palms.

She hums, drawing back to puff on her cigarette, and he smells the charring of bone in the exhale she produces, a huff, a pout, hiding a gentle sneer of contempt.

“Right, _Monsieur--_ your little office job.” She smiles, coy like a weasel. “That’s what they all say, in the end, you men. Work.”

Kieran clicks his tongue, rummaging further--

She places her leg on his abdomen from where he sits, turns him around so he can face her.

His face is still blank, expressionless. He only remembers her in fractions--the goal, the end. Her name used as a word to snare her like a hapless moth, and does not the flame feel disgusted?

But something in him stops. He looks at the picture of her now--body sprawled amongst waves and oceans of comforters, cool morning light just beginning to rise from the horizon and cascade throughout the room, backlighting her form in an overlay of dew, blonde tresses spilling on the pillows, a long line of smoke trailing from her cherry tart mouth, and he supposes that some things are still human, no matter how unreal they feel.

“Alright.” He says, finally, and she squeals with momentary delight. But when he moves to her vanity, picks up a pencil and a paper, her eyebrows twist in lynx-like irritation, confusion.

“What--?”

_“Just--”_ He stops her, holds out a hand. 

“Stay there.” He smiles winningly, with a charm that he dons like a raincoat, like a knife holster hugging what is underneath, which he can find to be nothing at all.

She humors him, although reluctantly, and he leans against the rim of the vanity, sketching the way her body curves under the sheets, the hard, angular planes of her hips and nose and lashes, the soft apples of her cheeks and the delicate bones of her wrists as they twist in the air languidly, the predatory look in her eyes, the one he’d noticed the night before last and decided that the information The Leader wanted would be found if he could only snake his way into the hen house, if he could outfox the fox.

The wisps of smoke billow into curtains from the tip of her cigarette, and as she snubs it into an ashtray and fluffs her hair, he finishes the drawing, setting down the pencil with a click that masks the opening of the bottom drawer.

She opens her mouth in a perfect ‘o’, tries to speak, but he puts a finger to her lips, silencing her with a tentative press of his lips to hers. She is too sugary--too sweet, like candy shoved down with molasses and honey.

“Thank you for humoring me, love.” He says, his voice deep, like a cello note in the quiet calm of an almost-morning. She giggles lightly, tosses her head, reaches out a dainty hand, fingernails varshined beautifully with the most violent red.

Red, red, like a fox plumage, eyes milky white with blue cunning. 

“May I see what that was?” She asks coyly, the syrup of her voice drawling like waves. He smiles good-naturedly, folds the drawing and tucks it into his pocket.

“No, I think--” He smiles, a finger to his lips as he buttons his shirt, shrugs on a blazer, toeing his way to the door.

“--I’ll keep it.” He throws a glance back, his blue eyes shining something clandestine.

Before she can open her mouth again, he leaves her in the room with the ever present, almost haunting knowledge that tomorrow, she will probably have to bleed more scarlet at his hand, and he will apologize to her, then, in a form not sullied by empty words.

Besides--he thinks, as he thumbs through the scraps of paper he’d extracted and hidden underneath the leaflet with the drawing on it--

It was not exactly unfruitful.

_Date: January 13th, XX25_

_Desc: Woman in the morning light. Graphite, loose leaf._

_I promised myself I would capture every moment. This is one that is human, enough, I think._

  
  


_) La Vipère_

Golden whiskey taints his tongue as he leans against the counter of the Grim Goblin, clad in cigarette smoke and ash, of the burning scent of inhibition.

Something in him wanes, today, perhaps as the moon’s endless cycle comes to another close, the light in the darkness nowhere to be seen but in the fractals of the stars, a mockery, a derision, however beautiful they are on their own.

Talk swells around him. Half of the people know, half of them don’t, but by the end of his reluctant stay here he is sure that all of them will have that privilege. He is unbothered, a cool raven with a collar thick enough to stop metal, and he will win the momentary fight without a need to draw his blade from his side, without the need to strike.

Suddenly, he feels a hand close around his shoulder, and when he looks up Belladonna is there, the rose flush of her hair cascading in waves down bare shoulders, her arms and waist covered in an organza of gold pleats, like scales. Her eyes are slits, narrow, and ever-so-keen on her rival.

“Kieran--not going to bed quite yet?” She smiles, and it is an unkind curve that makes her whole face look like a lepress, like an uncaring devil, a ruthless huntress clad in marigolds and palm leaves. The diamonds that adorn her ears sparkle in the dim light of the bar’s stained glass lamps, taunting even the bravest of thieves.

“It’s a bit too early for that, isn’t it, Bella?” Kieran mocks, his fingers toying the lip of his glass, watching the honey liquid splash on the ridges of the cup. Bella looks down from under curving lashes, her tone deceptively light and easy.

“What is--” she pushes away his arm to look down at what he’s doing, and he hastily checks her with his shoulder, pushing her away from the small drawing of a lamp he’d been puzzling over for as long as the whiskey had dwindled.

_“Oh.”_ She says, sneering. “I see.”

Kieran flicked his head, looking at her balefully, his jaw set in a rigid snap and grind. “If you didn’t need anything from me, I’m--”

“Why do you still do that?” She asks, her head cocked in a disrespect to inquisitive pity. She places a hand on her hip, and her nails are razor sharp as they curve around the swell of her gown. 

“It can’t be good for you--” she smiles--”it’ll ruin your fingers.”

Kieran laughs harshly. “Will it? I’m seven years kicking and it hasn’t hindered me, yet.”

“I think it’s foolish.” She pouts, rolls her eyes. “Just a distraction.”

“It’s _more_ than that,” he says plainly, closing his eyes so he won’t be blinded by the gems sitting on her collarbone, quivering with every breath, like it is a chore, a ritual.

“Really, then.” She frowns. 

“Draw me.” 

He looks up at her in surprise. She doesn’t seem to be joking. 

He reaches for a pencil to show her, that he will not deny her a request, but he stops himself--or, something inside him does.

He retracts his hand, pressing them together in a knit, a clasp, one fist in the other. She notices, the harpy sharp wings of her eyes catching the tense set to his shoulders, no matter how much he thinks he is a good liar.

“It--” he looks down, watches the light flicker on his gloves, the ridges of his knuckles. 

“It doesn’t work like that.”

He looks up, like he has had a revelation, the game unveiled.

“I cannot force it,” he says, and it is only true.

She laughs, a bark like a rabid animal, and leans forward until all he can smell is the cloying scent of vanilla, calla lilies and burnt promise. 

“I don’t believe you.” She hisses, her tongue scathing, like a viper, a snake, poisonous and canine.

Then, with a sweep and a mocking bow, she disappears into the back room. Kieran watches the trail of her gold dress, how it fans in pleats, ridges overlapping like the inlaid planes of a snake.

Then, he looks down at the blank sheet of paper, picks up his pencil, and begins.

He hasn’t drawn from pure memory in a long, long time. He finds it bad practice--worse even when the thing he is trying to commit is ephemeral, out of reach, like emotions or feelings rather than physical things. But now, unbidden, something from the dregs of his mind takes form.

A wide neck like a disc, tapering into a long, curving form that tilts with hidden, hard lines. A cold press to lips that do not quite touch, a forked tongue and beady eyes looking out from a mass of golden scales, fangs that bleed red wine. It curves in lithe ardor, tilts with passion towards an intended prey.

He lifts the corner of the page, looking down at the creation with cool contempt, with some form of smug satisfaction.

So. Here it is.

He wishes he could shout it.

_Date: November 4th, XX26_

_Desc: Viper. Charcoal, cardstock._

_I suppose I must draw the inhuman things, too._

_  
) Le Résistance_

When he gets back from the Messenger’s den, his coat dragging on the wooden floorboards and his exposed chest taut with unexpressed emotion, he can only toss the remaining flower he’d kept in his pockets into the wastebin, the flowers wilting, and fishes in his drawer for the keys to his room--his real room.

Long since has this room in his apartment taken the place of his bedroom, long since has this room become his one solace. But as he settles again, takes up a pad of paper and a stick of graphite, of grey and solid chrome, he feels anything but steady, calm.

Gold, gold and honey and red and—

He starts off, and for the first time in seeming ages, he draws himself.

He’d never done that before, had never bothered to conjure up something so monstrous when what he wanted to do what forget. But tonight is is unignorable, the way the moment had become stamped in the roll of film playing out in his head, the way he’d come back to it time and time and time again.

He cares not for the way he renders himself, if only so he can move on to her. 

_Her._

The way her delicate neck twisted as he raised his legs to kick her mask off and her guard with it, the way she’d looked at him as he’d held his unforgiving blade to the dips of her throat, the way when he’d stepped forward, she hadn’t moved back.

_Officer, officer._

Her voice rings in his ears, like a song he cannot forget, the notes of it chiming something discordant, not discreet, and yet soothing, light, calm even in animalistic ferocity.

He’d stopped. He’d _stopped._

What he’d told that boy all those years ago--what he’d learned himself, it was all thrown out, discarded like leaves of rice paper.

Do not hesitate in the moment, get it on paper first. Do not hesitate, do not.

All went out the window when he’d managed to cage himself with an officer who did not know anything but that he was as ruthless as her.

For some reason, when he’d seen her in the cafe, she hadn’t registered as something so out of place. Humans will fight and wage war, and it has always run to a track of smooth birdsong, of a drone of radio static But this--

He finishes her lips, parted in abject surprise, and tilts his head back, looks at the image he’s just created, of a moment where, again, like the boy, the robin, the bread and the vixen, he’d seen something in life that made him pause and think.

He does not sign his name, because he does not need help remembering what this was.

Instead, he merely scribbles frantically in the margins, and then leaps up, so he does not have to look at it a second longer, as though the memory both repulses and lures him. He leaves it buried under other renditions, cups of tea and a man smoking his last cigar in the square, and turns on his heel, so he can retreat to the sink and wash the blood out of his fingernails.

_Date: November 14th, XX27_

_Desc: Officer, assassin. Graphite, charcoal, marker paper_

_Why did I hesitate?_

_) La Femme en Rouge_

  
  


“I’ll find who did it for you.”

The effect that it has on Lauren Sinclair, those words, he has to hide how much it startles him, catches him off guard.

She smiles, a curving tilt of her lips, pink with chill and rounded like petals, and her pleased breath huffs out in wisps of smoke, and she is the most real thing he has seen in years, in years, and she is _lovely, lovely._

He watches her turn from him to walk, her steps aligned like the hands of a clock, like the ticking of time itself, and he notes the gentle slope of her throat in her scarf, the way her hair is still caught in the folds of her wrap and her coat, the red flowing like pools around her shoulders and ears. It’s a nice red--not too saturated, too glaring, but muted like a robin’s breast, serene like a rose’s furl.

And the way her eyes look in happiness, in soft trust--he suddenly feels afraid.

As he turns his head, holds out the bag with the offending outfit that ruins the serene calm to her face, he feels embarrassingly afraid.

Because he knows only one thing, and it is cemented when she has finally left his house, her honey and forest fire scent permeating his house and trailing behind her like a lost puppy, and he can finally unlock the cavern, sit, and begin.

He knows it when he outlines her face, the gentle way it had curved in delight, only for him and the promise he gave to her, a thing like teetering glass, ready to shatter, ready to spintler on the precipice.

He knows it when he stares at his partner’s expression, soft and unguarded for the first time, and feels the warring emotions of fondness and apprehension in his chest.

He knows when he pins it to the wall with a thread of red yarn, like the points on their board that connect them in fragile trust, the mark of their hands the only permanence, the only constant in their relationship.

He knows he cannot sign this work, because it is not his to have.

_Date: December 23th, XX27_

_Desc: Portrait of an officer. Graphite, cardstock_

_I cannot hope to replicate this. I will only disappoint; only destroy what I have built._

_) Les Orphelins_

He wonders, dully, if his breath could be lost further. 

He doesn’t seem to want for much of anything, tonight. Not when his orders swirl in his head, not when his hands ache with the feeling of her throat--

He growls, low in his chest, like a caged animal, and reaches for a pencil. It is instinct, mechanical, his ritual, a rite of passage.

He wonders if he should try from memory again, to reach into the depths of his mind and picture her angry face, her lovely features contorted in a murderous fury that he could be proud of, if not for the fact that is was too much like his own, and it was on her lips and eyelids and brows, and he had caused it.

He almost does, in fact, beginning the hard angles of her fury, her smiting rage. But stops himself when he gets to the way rainwater had pooled at her cheeks, the way it looked like eerie tears, the way he felt so very inhuman at the thought of rendering such hate.

So instead, he focuses on the little thing, the glimmer of coins and the dull drip of rainwater down a hat, seeped with muck and mud and yet clutched in youthful, grubby fingers, attached to the body of a boy whose eyes shone in gratitude, in relief.

His eyes are round, wide things, pitched with awe and reverence, and Kieran cannot help the smile.

Even after he is rendered monstrous, even after he is cast as the role of the blasphemous liar, the cold killer and the stealer of good faith, he still deludes himself into thinking he can be anything but.

She was right. Lauren Sinclair is always right, always the opposite of his wrong.

He leaves the orphans where they should be, and prepares to don a mask, a pair of glasses framing his jaw, and to button up his collar until they constrict around his own throat.

It is his birthright, to be a creator. Because they destroy, too.

_Date: December 24th, XX27_

_Desc: Three orphans, outside L’Eglise. Graphite, marker paper._

_It burns, my folly, my plea._

_What have I done?_

_) Les Copains_

When he turns on the lamp for the umpteenth time, takes up his pencil again, he finds within a peace he does not feel, and yet it flows through his fingers, the way they pulse and ache.

The girl, she teases. The boy is irritated, and yet underneath, when the girl touches his nose, names him undone, there is a hint of fondness, in the way his eyes crinkle, in the way his body instinctively leans in.

Kieran smiles.

It’s funny, how humans try to hide; but once they are photographed, caught unawares, they cannot hide the emotion, the sanctuary within that houses their humanity, their reality.

And the light flickers, his sleeves dragging in smudges of graphite, his fingers stained irreparably. But it is warm, it is warm.

He does not sign his work, still. Not now, not this.

_Date: December 25th, XX27_

_Desc: Two friends. Graphite, loose leaf_

_It is not mine to have, and yet I take it for my own._

_I am greedy; I am a creator._

  
  


_) Le Jardin du Jacinthes_

He dreams. It’s not often that Kieran White does this, but his mind gives it to him in allowances, in little pockets of pity.

One day, he thinks as he stands in a field of hyacinths. His toes dig and curl into pressed petals, purple snaking like bruises into the pads as he begins to walk, arms outstretched.

One day, he thinks, as he looks up at the sky, hazy and lethargic in formation, haphazard blue and yellow mixing together. Color theory, color theory—it’s some form of grace that there’s no red to be seen.

One day, he thinks, as he opens his mouth, freshwater collecting in it even though the sky does not weep so.

One day, he thinks, he will be able to do this in real life. One day this will be his birthright again, and he will be able to stand on his own two feet and apologize with more than iron and rust and the tang of bitter, sour citrus.

He holds his arms wide, bending his back, arching so he falls into the bed of hyacinths at his feet, surrounding him and suffocating him in the weight of all he has done. He reads like a fallen angel in pale moonlight, in dawning day, in the wisps of the dream he cannot place, where he can be everything he wants and nothing at all.

He wakes in his bed, the trails and dregs of the dream nipping at his ankles, a buzzing like a swarm of wasps in his head, trying, trying. He feels out of sorts, and yet there is a serene acceptance that pools in his heart.

He rises like a ghost, white fabric draping as he twists, moves like a pather to the door, left unblocked through nights of haste. 

He sits, and his palms still ache, they still ache.

They ache.

He begins.

He knows what they look like, knows what they do. They form towers of insecurity, of a thing he once had to his name, now made into a symbol of a thing he did not want.

He knows, still, how to shade the flowers so they achieve a near violet hue, how to make them bloom when they rot.

He knows this will never be his, that he will never have anything.

But that is the thing, because there is one thing that is his right, as an artist, as a creator and destroyer.

That rush, that fear of ruining a blank page, it is gone with his hope.

He has a right, a claim, a way of making his own war.

He is a good artist.

He is a good artist.

He looks at the field of hyacinths, the garden of his repentance, and feels only nothing.

_Date: Unspecified._

_Desc: Hyacinth field. Colored pencil, pastel_

_One day._

_One day, I won’t hesitate to feel again._

**Author's Note:**

> Translations: 
> 
> Le Nid de Merle—The Robin’s Nest  
> La Salle à Manger—The Dining Room  
> Le Petit Blanchet—The Little White-Haired Boy (very roughly)  
> La Rue de Hanbury—Hanbury Street  
> La Renarde—The Vixen (vixens are female foxes, the French is effeminate, here)  
> La Vipère—The Viper  
> Le Résistance—The Resistance/ The Revolution  
> Le Femme en Rouge—The Woman in Red  
> Les Orphelins—The Orphans  
> Les Copains—The Friends  
> Le Jardin du Jacinthes—The Hyacinth Garden
> 
> Whew! Please feel free to correct me if I’m wrong on any of those :>
> 
> This was so fun to write. I’m pretty proud of myself, here! I do hope you enjoy the angst fest >:D
> 
> As always kudos/comments are hyacinths <3
> 
> Insta: @artsofisha
> 
> -thumbipeach


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